Author Dana Lockhart

When I'm put in an unfavorable situation, I try to look on the bright side of things. More often than not, the bright side is always the same: a learning experience. Whether it's a bad breakup, a civil suit, or a risk like investing in my novel, there's always a learning experience. And I love learning. I identify as a scholar, as a student, no matter if I'm enrolled in study or not. And this entire book adventure has been one heck of a learning experience. I always thought I was good at manipulating Microsoft Word, but I discovered new options and standards than what I knew before. Not to mention all the learning of how to write better to even get the book finished. I received my first proof on April 16th for my novel The Un-Life of William Moore. Getting it proof-ready was a challenge in itself. I didn't embed fonts right the first time, had a bunch of hidden blank pages I had to deal with. But the first proof wasn't that bad. Needed some margin work, but oth...

After over a year since I started this journey, The Un-Life of William Moore will soon be available to put on your bookshelf. I already had an e-book cover, but to be able to hold this book in your hands I went back and got a spine and back added to it. A week of waiting was well worth it! Here is the official book cover for The Un-Life of William Moore : I am so ecstatic about this cover. Thank you, again, Zakaria Nada , for working with me on making this book come to life. I didn't have a single complaint on the background of the back cover and am still in awe of how amazing it looks. If you need a book cover done, I highly recommend Zak and her watercolor style book covers. She has great turn around time and great taste. She also designed the bookmark (coming soon) that will come with this book when you buy it at one of my book signings. -Book Signing Times and Locations- Speaking of signings, I already have three book signings on the schedule and a potential fourth in the works...

It's Day 6 and the drive to complete that novel is dissipating.  You're looking for distractions to keep yourself from writing.  Here is a list of 5 distractions so that you can just do them and get them out of the way so you can get back to writing.  I'm trying to focus on productive distractions so that you're still keeping those creative juices flowing, even if it's not towards your novel. -Write a Blog Post- Got a website?  Write a blog post.  I'm totally not distracting myself from my own novel right now.  Nope.  Totally not.  Try and focus your blog post in the NaNoWriMo direction:  talk about the novel you're writing, the progress you've made, how many activities (writing sprints/dares) you've participated in, or tips you think would help someone complete their goal.  Try and be that inspiration for someone else to get back at it, as well as yourself. -Peruse the NaNoWriMo Website- There's a lot of little creative things to do on ...

As I come closer to self-publishing my first novel, the very important question came up: Should I use a pen name? -I Have a Weird Name- My given name isn’t easy for your average person. I’ve come to get used to it. I am not exaggerating in the slightest when I say that my name was misspelled no less and probably more than ten times during the process of buying my first home. You’d think with something that important that everyone involved would double check an odd name and make sure it was right before they printed out cashier checks, sale contracts, HUD statements, and insurance and remodeling estimates (yes, these are just a few examples of the documents that had my name spelled wrong). After that fiasco, it was very clear to me that if I published, I needed to use a pen name. I can’t have people not being able to find me because my given name is too hard. Do I want to use a pen name? Well, no. I’m not ashamed by my name, I don’t hate my name, and I really would like to see my...